Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb are investing billions in new pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities at Generation Park in Houston, Texas.
Low land costs, tax incentives, infrastructure, and access to transportation are attracting major life sciences companies to the region.
San Jacinto College’s new Biotechnology Center is training workers to fill the area’s biomanufacturing talent gap and support future pharmaceutical growth.
First was Eli Lilly with a $6.5 billion commitment for a new manufacturing plant. Now Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) is considering a new 600,000-square-foot facility. Both companies have selected the 4,300-acre Generation Park northeast of Houston, Texas, as the site of their investments.
Lower land costs, low taxes, plus the Texas Jobs, Energy, Technology and Innovation program launched in January 2024 are attracting major manufacturers in several sectors.
However, the investments put forward by the pharmaceutical industry play into the Donald Trump administration’s efforts to re-shore the U.S. drug industry.
“We are making pharmaceuticals in America again thanks to President Trump’s America First Trade Agenda,” says U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.
Zach Leger, vice-president of health care and life sciences at real estate company JLL, told local media that McCord Development’s Generation Park is offering sites that are already deed-restricted for life sciences, as well as easy power interconnections and proximity to both the Port of Houston and George Bush Intercontinental Airport. These are making the park increasingly attractive to companies like Eli Lilly and BMS.
Generation Park also includes McCord’s BioHub Two, a 45-acre master-planned biomanufacturing campus currently under development. BioHub Two offers over a million square feet of for sale and built-to-suit biomanufacturing, lab and office space designed to attract life sciences companies to the region.
Generation Park was the vision of Ryan McCord, CEO and president of McCord Development. McCord felt Houston offered the necessary infrastructure to be a leader in life sciences but watched as biotech investments flowed to other cities. One main challenge facing the Houston region was an ongoing shortage of technicians to support critical functions such as laboratory setup, data collection and research observation.
So, McCord turned to San Jacinto College, a proven provider of industry-aligned programs. The result is the recently opened San Jacinto College Center for Biotechnology.
“San Jacinto College’s Biotechnology Center at Generation Park is the catalyst our region needs to fill the gap in our existing life science ecosystem and accelerate biomanufacturing in Houston,” says McCord.
The San Jacinto College’s Biotechnology Center has been called “the catalyst our region needs to fill the gap in our existing life science ecosystem and accelerate biomanufacturing in Houston.” Image: San Jacinto College’s Biotechnology Center
The college now offers courses that train pharmaceutical manufacturing workers. Graduates will likely find work quickly, both with the new corporate arrivals to the park and others across the State of Texas.
“We aim to be leaders in every industry,” the college says. “From global reach to new partnerships to state-of-the-art training facilities, our biomanufacturing technology program is breaking barriers every day.”
Further confirmation of the college’s magnetic attraction to pharmaceutical companies comes from Shaun Noorian, CEO and founder of Houston-based Empower Pharmacy, a large-scale compounding pharmacy. Noorian says the San Jacinto Center for Biotechnology is a wonderful addition to Generation Park, telling the Houston Business Journal his company has also been in touch with San Jacinto College regarding the hiring of graduates.
“There was not a site like the Center for Biotechnology before San Jacinto College created it,” Noorian said. “It was all us having to create our own training programs and training personnel on our processes. The Center for Biotechnology is going to add a lot of value not just to our company but to all the other biopharmaceutical companies that want to create sites here.”
Although more modest, United Therapeutics has also selected Generation Park to house its 22-acre $96 million specialized facility to breed genetically modified swine used for human organ transplantation.
Generation Park is also home to Lone Star College’s Process Technology Center and companies in other sectors such as global energy services firm TechnipFMC and Apache Industrial Services, a specialty industrial and commercial service provider for the construction and maintenance industry.
However, it is the recent multibillion-dollar announcements from drug giants Eli Lilly and BMS that are causing excitement.
Indianapolis-based Eli Lilly’s filing in July with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation indicated construction timelines for various facilities were to begin over the past two months. Overall completion of the 236-acres campus is estimated to be in 2030, with CRB Architects PC and Jacobs Engineering Group listed on the filings as the design firms.
The company has already received school district property tax exemptions for the site as well as various state incentives.
“Lilly will bring 615 new high-wage jobs to the Greater Houston area, including highly skilled engineers, scientists, operations personnel and lab technicians,” the company said in a media release, and expects to generate 4,000 construction jobs as the site is being built and brought online.
In early August, BMS officially announced its selection of Generation Park as the site for its new $2.3 billion multi-modal manufacturing campus, aided by a state grant of $4.89 million. The company estimates nearly 500 skilled jobs will be created at the facility.
“The selection of Houston marks a significant milestone in BMS’ $40 billion commitment to invest in the United States over five years across research and development, technology and domestic manufacturing,” BMS says.
The BMS Houston campus is conceived to be modular and multi-modal. The modular design allows BMS to add and reconfigure manufacturing capacity in response to current and future needs.
The company explains its multi-modal capabilities, “allow BMS to manufacture multiple types of medicines – such as small molecules, biologics, and antibody-drug conjugates – across a range of disease areas, supporting drug product and finished goods manufacturing from late development through launch. This flexibility ensures the campus can evolve to meet patient needs well into the future.”
“Texas is the best state in America for doing business,” said Gov. Greg Abbott. “Texas is doing its part to bring manufacturing capacity back to America and expanding biomedical manufacturing right here in our great state.”
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